The Results are in: Instagram Ads are a Winner

For those of us in mobile marketing, it’s been clear for years that Instagram would be a tremendous opportunity for advertisers one day. Those days are finally here.

At Bamboo, we’ve spent the past few months diving deep into Instagram advertising. We’ve executed campaigns for clients across numerous industries, scaled up from zero to hundreds of thousands of dollars in spend in just weeks, and most importantly, driven real, tangible results for clients.

We’re ready to declare: Instagram Ads Are a Winner.

Early Results Are Strong

Let’s lead with the most important part, actual results of Bamboo Instagram campaigns:

Operating Instagram is Easy for Facebook Advertisers

The results above should enough to excite anyone to jump into Instagram ads. Whats perhaps even more astounding than early results, however, has been how painless it has been to achieve them. Given how tightly interwoven Instagram is with Facebook, things will feel incredibly familiar for those already running Facebook ads. Here’s why:

1. Integration is Painless

If you’re already one of the 2 million people running Facebook ads, integration for Instagram typically takes less than 5 minutes. No technical work is required — a stark contrast to other ad networks which often require heavy lifting even for a small test.

2. Significant Scale Is Available

Instagram has more than 400 million users. While this doesn’t match Facebook’s audience of 1.3 billion, it’s still very significant. We’ve quickly seen multiple instances of Instagram becoming a strong 2nd or 3rd channel for clients.

3. Operations Are Nearly Identical

Many months of testing isn’t required on Instagram. This is because of the similarity in ad operations between Instagram and Facebook.

Currently, all Instagram audiences are pulled from Facebook-based audiences. This means that you can have confidence in moving over audiences that work well on Facebook to Instagram.
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While creative is more unique to Instagram, we’ve been able to quickly adjust with each client so far to find their Instagram creative style — one which blends the tradition of visual excellence of the platform and the demand for actual end performance of the ad.

The Best is Yet to Come

It’s still day zero on Instagram. Multiple releases on the horizon give us confidence that performance will only get better:

Catching Up to Facebook — Instagram already has pretty impressive parity with Facebook on creative and targeting options. Still, there are a few releases ahead which are needed to fill the existing gaps. Just today, for example, Instagram announced a wider release of Carousel units on Facebook.

Instagram-Specific Audiences — Currently, Instagram targeting is directly pulled and matched from Facebook audiences. This has driven strong results and is an incredibly easy experience for existing Facebook advertisers. But — imagine the possible results if Instagram-specific audiences were available. Ads will be more relevant and more performant when advertisers can choose Instagram handles or Instagram accounts as targeting options.